The Angel Wore Fangs(52)
“You’re different now.”
“Not all that different. Not totally. I still want to devour a whole haunch of boar when no one’s looking. Before we returned to the keep today, I was tempted to eat the bear’s heart raw. I fear how much ale I will drink afore I fall into my bed furs this night. And you . . . ah, spare me Lord, but I want to ravish you so bad I can taste your coconut. I have fantasies about . . . you do not want to know!”
She blinked at him. Was he kidding? No, that smoldering look in his silver-blue eyes was no joke. She licked her lips, and inhaled his peppermint scent. Delicious. Intoxicating. No, no, no, she couldn’t succumb to this insanity. “How long? How long before we can leave?”
He shrugged. “If we make it until spring, all should be well. I can empty my treasure room, if necessary, or sell a few longships.”
A few longships? How many does he have? Never mind. That’s not important now. “That could be as much as four or five months!” she wailed.
He nodded. “There’s one thing you must understand. Like most deluded people, you believe you can control the path of your life. I know better than most, through a thousand and more years of living on the Earth, that only the Lord steers our destiny. We cruise along in life thinking we have done all the proper planning—education, righteous living, good jobs—therefore ensuring a certain future, but then God, or St. Michael, sticks out his big toe, and bam, we are flat on our faces, wondering how our carefully laid plans could go so awry.”
She had to laugh at the image. But then she realized something. “Let’s cut to the bone here. Are you trying to say you have no control over when, or if, we go back?” She felt herself panic at the prospect of being stuck here forever.
“Yes.”
She swatted him on the arm. “You idiot! You led me to believe—”
“No, no, no! You assumed I could wave a magic wand, or sprout angel wings, or something, and we would suddenly be back in the future in the exact time and space I wanted. It doesn’t work that way, or exactly.”
“How does it work, exactly?”
“Sarcasm ill-suits you, m’lady,” he said with a grin.
She swatted him again and muttered, “M’lady, my ass.”
“That, too.” He winked at her and tried to hold her hand in his, but she tugged it away. She wasn’t going to be soft-soaped by winks or sweet touches.
“In the past, for many centuries, we vangels went back and forth through time, up to and including the twentieth century. Never at our own selection. Just a sudden relocation when one mission was completed and a new one started. We lived in caves. We lived in castles. We were knights and slaves, gladiators and lion food, Cossacks and pilgrims, wherever there were grievous sinners and Lucipires, we went. But then Michael decided at the beginning of the twenty-first century that there was enough evil there to warrant a permanent detachment of vangels staying there. So now we may move sideways, from place to place in present times, but no more back and forth through the ages.”
“How do you explain our coming back then?”
“I can’t,” he said. “I only know that Michael had to have a hand in this. I’m assuming he wants me to correct my past mistakes. Or rid this region of Lucipires. Or punish me. Maybe all of those, or something else altogether.
“Or maybe we made a wrong turn on the time-travel highway. Maybe it was a mistake, like Ivak getting Gabrielle pregnant, even though he’s sterile, was a mistake that Michael never anticipated.” He shrugged. “It’s hard to tell with Michael.”
“Why can’t he be more clear?”
“I wish! It’s not the way he works.”
“Why am I involved? I mean, I can see how it works for you. You’re a frickin’ vangel. I’m just a pastry chef.”
“I’m not sure.”
“That’s just great. If you don’t know, who does?”
“It may have something to do with that lifemate crap.”
“Um, what’s a lifemate?”
“You know, the sex lures we both apparently exude, just to each other, coconut and peppermint, but those aren’t sent by Michael, I don’t think. In fact, they interfere with his plans, usually, and that annoys him.”
“At the moment, I’m not worried about annoying anyone, even a saint.”
“You should be,” he said. “If we’re intended as lifemates, we’re essentially one person in vangeldom. Where I go, you would go. If I die, you would die. So, it makes a kind of warped sense that if I teletransported myself, you would come with me.”